


Beat

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Batman and Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-07-26
Packaged: 2018-07-26 22:25:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7592593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A young Dick Grayson wakes up to an emergency.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beat

Dick heard the footsteps while he was still asleep— someone coming across his bedroom floor too quickly, breathing hard. He snapped awake when Alfred grabbed his arm and shook him, rough and urgent.

“Cave. Now.” Alfred vanished back into the hallway, leaving a rectangle of light bleeding through the open door and the clock glowing green on Dick’s desk. Three in the morning. Too early for school so why—?

Maybe it was one of Bruce’s training drills. Dick rolled out of bed, still fuzzy from sleep, and slipped in something wet lying on his bedroom floor. He fell, knocked his head on the corner of his dresser, and came up with his hands smeared dark where he’d tried to break his fall. He held them towards the light from the hallway. Was that—?

Blood. There was blood on his floor, a trail of footprints marking everywhere Alfred had stepped. Alfred was bleeding? That couldn’t be right. He wasn’t moving like he was injured, and he sounded _worried_ , which meant someone else was bleeding, which meant—

Dick sprinted down the hallway, into the living room, through the open face of the grandfather clock, and down into the cave. This couldn’t be one of Bruce’s drills because Bruce wasn’t supposed to be home— he left before Dick went to bed, by himself, to go after someone that was “too dangerous” for Dick with his six months of training, so if anyone was bleeding it would be—

Dick skidded to a halt in the circle of light that was the medical bay. Bruce. It would be Bruce. Bruce was lying on the operating table, Alfred bent over him, looking pale and motionless. Blood was pooling underneath him. Dick could see a trail of it splashed over the side of the batmobile and along the cave floor, streaky where Alfred must have dragged him.

For a few seconds, Dick froze. This wasn’t happening. Not again. Bruce was Batman. He didn’t get injured, and he certainly didn’t die— not that Bruce was dead because Alfred wouldn’t operate on a corpse, and Bruce’s heartbeat was pulsing on a screen, too fast but definitely beating, so—

Alfred threw a box of gloves over the table. “Hands.” Dick nodded, caught the box, and scrambled over to the sink. He scrubbed furiously at the blood on his fingers, splashed water on his face, and pulled on a pair of gloves, running back towards the table— as soon as he arrived, Alfred grabbed his wrists and pressed his hands into bloody wads of bandage, one on Bruce’s shoulder, the other in his side. “Apply pressure.”

Dick leaned his weight into his arms. Apply pressure. Right. Apply pressure and stop the bleeding, but he couldn’t remember what came next, and he was starting to panic, and he was an eight year old in pajamas, and Bruce looked bad, bad enough to need a hospital, and Dick didn’t even know what happened while Bruce was out by himself. Maybe if he hadn’t been alone? But what would Dick have been able to do to anyone Bruce couldn’t handle?

Bruce was always saying that vigilanteism wasn’t a game. Dick had never thought it was, but he hadn’t thought about this either. Dying himself, sure, but—

Alfred passed him a curved needle and a length of nylon, but Dick’s hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t force the thread through the eye, so Alfred yanked them away again. Dick decided not to watch. He didn’t want to look, so he stared at his own fingers instead. The cave floor was cold against his bare feet. He could hear the bats screeching on the ceiling. Bruce looked _bad_ , but he was okay, it was going to be okay, Alfred knew what he was doing.

It took hours. By the time they stepped away from the table, Dick felt blank, brain empty, staring out in front of him.

“He’ll be fine,” Alfred told him.

Dick nodded, biting at his lip. “I think I should have…” He trailed off, gesturing in front of him. He wasn’t sure what he was trying to say.

Alfred put a hand on Dick’s shoulder. “You were exactly where he needed you to be tonight.”

Dick was… tired. His eyes hurt. He didn’t want to leave the cave, so he pulled the chair from the computer bank over to Bruce’s table and settled down inside it. Bruce was going to be fine. Dick could hear his heartbeat in the monitors behind him: beat and beat and beat. Slower. Fine.

The lights made his head ache. Dick set his arms on the edge of Bruce’s bed and buried his face in his elbows. He could sleep, right? He could still hear the monitor. He would know if anything changed. His closed his eyes and listened: beat and beat and beat and beat and—


End file.
